


This is the way the world begins

by coffee_mage



Category: Marvel (Comics), Young Avengers
Genre: Apocalypse, M/M, not what it seems, odd format, power, world ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-03
Updated: 2012-03-03
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:45:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffee_mage/pseuds/coffee_mage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hulkling falls in battle.  (Character death but with repairs)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the way the world begins

Billy watches with horror as Teddy falls. No wings sprout as Teddy plummets like a stone. Billy puts out his hand and—

Wiccan watches impassively as Hulkling falls. Hulkling is limp, falling like a stone. Wiccan puts out a hand and—

The shadows overtake the world as Hulkling falls. The sun disappears as if behind clouds, but there’s no tell-tale glow where it should be. If anyone was watching, if anyone was looking—

The sun disappears. The sun disappears and the world goes cold. Statues rise from the ground, idols to fallen heroes. But they weren’t dead they didn’t have to be—

The world slowly dissolves, turning to dust as it revolves, a sunless world of emptiness, the grass turned to straw, the dessicated corpses laying in mid-action, some in small groups, some alone, all fallen where they stood as Teddy—

The figure stands alone on a dissolving high rise on a dusty, dark world, hand extended—

The card falls on the tabletop, tattered, the corners worn and dog-eared. The tower burns, the two men fall, the crown topples from the top. The child looks up into the eyes of the old woman and his eyes darken in a way that doesn’t make sense for a mere infant of the arts but this isn’t the moment but it will be and he knows what she never—

The body hits the ground.

\--told him, this infant, this child. But he already knows. He’s already seen. More than once. This is just confirmation. This is again, not revelation.

\--wondering where it all went wrong.

\--fell, his costume torn, his limbs flapping.

\--dead, this was all his fault, he needed to focus. They shouldn’t be dead. He shouldn’t be dead. He couldn’t be dead.

\--they would have seen that the sun had gone out, disappeared, not just gone behind clouds. But there was no one to watch.

\--and he ends the world.

\--and Teddy appears at his feet. Billy falls to his knees, hands on Teddy’s body and he glows with a light he has never shown before, whiter than white, brighter than bright. No words exist for how he glows, for how it permeates existence. Billy would know. Words are his power. Billy uses a tattered edge of his cape to wipe blood from Teddy’s face, feeling the dampbrightstickylight. “Live,” he murmurs. Teddy’s eyes open.

This is the way the world ends.  
This is the way the world begins.  
This is the way it endsbeginsagainagain.  
Not with a bang, but a heartbeat.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired in part by three things.
> 
> 1) They've never really addressed (to my satisfaction) Teddy being tortured in front of Billy in Civil War. And yet Billy has, we believe, the ability to alter all of existence.
> 
> 2) One of my favourite poems, The Hollow Men by TS Eliot.
> 
> 3) The Tower card from the Ryder-Waite tarot. http://www.keen.com/documents/works/articles/tarot/the-tower-tarot-card.asp Just look at the men falling from the tower. Dark haired man with a red cape. Blonde man.


End file.
